


Hand of Death

by bardsley



Category: Macbeth - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-29 21:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20088679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsley/pseuds/bardsley
Summary: Lady MacBeth reflects on her life.





	Hand of Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FleetSparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/gifts).

When she was young, her mother always praised her hands. She would smile while mama took her small hand in both of mama’s larger ones. _So soft!_ Mama would say. She meant it as a compliment. Soft hands meant that you did not have to work. You were taken care of. You were, indeed, a lady.

As she began to grow, she found that there were many other things to being a lady. She learned that being cared for also meant that you were not able--not allowed--to make choices for yourself. Papa choose MacBeth for her while they were both so young. She could not see the match, at first. Was she not fair? With her breeding, could she not marry higher? The son of a king, perhaps?

She was fortunate, she supposed, because they grew to love each other. Over time, McBath even acquired some of her ambition. But, still she sometimes wondered about what could have been.

Not often, though, because as Lady MacBeth, she had duties and responsibilities and better things to do than daydream. She had the intellect to help her household to prosper. Over time, the house of MacBeth became greater than it had been when she married into it.

Her husband had been at her side to help with all of it. While she sometimes thought that his heart was too soft, MacBeth had all the strength that she could have wished for in a husband. If she sometimes envied that strength, or wished that she could be on the battlefield while he stayed at home, then that was between her and God.

When MacBeth returned from battle with his strange tale of the three women, she thought that perhaps God had finally put their fate into her hands. What could those women have been, if not a sign from God? No. That was a lie. She perhaps knew, even then, they were likely a sign of something else. They were messengers of someone very far from God. She chose to ignore it. She thought that there would be time.

When her husband was on the throne of Scotland and she was his queen, they could atone. They could repent the evil that they had done to reach their greatness. If they ruled as Christians, with kindness toward their people, God would forgive them.

At least, that was what she had told herself.

She wondered, now, if she had ever really believed that either. Had there anything but her and her own ambition? She couldn’t remember. It was hard to think. She could only think of the blood of the true king that she had smeared on the servants’ faces. She thought of the chill she felt as her husband addressed Banquo at the dinner table after the man was dead. She thought of the screams of Lady MacDuff and her children--screams that she had never heard, but still echoed in her mind so loudly that she could not hear her own voice.

She grieved for them, and she grieved for the living too. Her strong, soft-hearted husband she saw now was only strong. She would not have believed how diminished that made him feel to her.

She grieved for herself, and what the ambition that papa had always told her was unwelcome in a woman had cost her. That ambition had cost her tranquility and her certainty and her sleep and perhaps her soul. It had stained her, inside and out.

Lady MacBeth looked down at her bloodstained hands. She remembered washing them, but they were soiled again. She could see the look of disappointment on mama’s face, although mama died many years ago. Mama never liked it when her hands were dirty. She could not let mama take her hands now.


End file.
